Online Gambling Regulations, Laws and Taxes in Denmark

Minutes left

minutes to read

Minutes left

Nick

Casino Expert Since 2014

Expertise: Strategy & Planning, Editorial Oversight, Quality Control, Content Audits

Hi, I’m Nick! I love checking facts and measuring the impact of news in the whole iGaming industry. Things change fast, which is why I’m always onto something, whether it’s a casino, a guide, or a new piece that can make or break a whole market.

Learn about our Review Process

Published: July 26, 2020
Updated: September 16, 2026

Denmark has run a licensed online casino market since January 2012, and it is one of the tidier ones in Europe. One regulator, one licence list, one national self-exclusion register. You must be 18. Winnings from a Danish-licensed site are tax-free, and you put nothing on your tax return.

What Denmark does not do is cap your deposits for you. There is no national weekly limit the way Belgium has one. The tools are there, but you set them.

The bigger shift is still coming: a marketing package passed in October 2025 that will strip gambling ads out of live sport, public transport and anything near a school. It is law, but it is not in force yet.

Key takeaways: gambling in Denmark

Legal and licensed since 1 January 2012, when the Danish Gambling Act opened casino games, sports betting and poker to private operators.
Spillemyndigheden is the regulator – the Danish Gambling Authority. Not SKAT, which is the tax agency and is often confused for it.
Minimum age is 18 for online casino and betting, and accounts are verified through MitID.
Winnings from Danish-licensed operators are tax-free. Nothing to declare, nothing to pay.
Winnings from unlicensed sites are not. They count as personal income, taxed at up to roughly 52%, with no deduction for losses.
Operators pay 28% of gross gaming revenue on online casino and betting, up from 20% in January 2021.
ROFUS covers the whole licensed market at once – more than 60,000 Danes have used it.
Danske Spil keeps the lottery and the racing pools. Everything else is open to licensed competition.

However, there is a lot more to the story, and that we will cover in the next few sections.

Is online gambling legal in Denmark?

Yes. Casino games, sports betting, poker and the lottery are all legal, and you can play online at any site holding a Danish licence.

The licence is the whole question. Denmark does not prosecute players for using an unlicensed site, so nothing happens to you legally. But a Danish licence is what gives you a regulator to complain to, ROFUS cover, tested games and tax-free winnings. Lose the licence and you lose all four at once.

Licensed operators in the Danish market pulled in DKK 760 million, roughly €102 million, in gross gaming revenue during July 2026 alone, which drove an overall 17.2 per cent year-on-year surge in consumer gambling spend. It is a small market by European standards, but a highly competitive one.

Are online gambling winnings taxable in Denmark?

No, not if you played at a Danish-licensed site. Your winnings arrive whole, and there is nothing to report. The operator has already paid the duty on its side.

That flips entirely once you play somewhere unlicensed. Winnings from operators outside the Danish market count as personal income, taxed at rates that can reach about 52%, and you have to self-report them.

You cannot deduct your losing sessions against them either, which is the part that tends to catch people out.

There is a narrow middle ground. A win from an EU or EEA operator can still be tax-free, but only where three things are true at once: the operator is based in an EU or EEA state, it is approved by a public authority there, and an equivalent game is licensed in Denmark. Miss one and you are back in taxable territory.

What Danish casino operators pay?

Licensed online casino and betting operators hand over 28% of gross gaming revenue, calculated and paid monthly. That rate rose from 20% on 1 January 2021 and has remained at that level since.

Getting in is not cheap either. A single licence application costs DKK 327,500, or DKK 458,500 for both the casino and betting licences. Annual fees then scale with revenue, from DKK 65,500 up to around DKK 5.9 million.

High entry costs keep the fly-by-night operators out, which is good for players. The trade-off is a smaller shortlist than you would get in a market like Sweden or the UK.

How Denmark's gambling laws got here

For decades, Danske Spil was the only legal betting company in the country – while an estimated 400-plus offshore sites happily took Danish bets anyway. That gap is what forced the change.

Year	What changed	What it means in practice
2010	The Danish Gambling Act is passed	Parliament votes to break the Danske Spil monopoly and build a licensing system.
2012	The market opens on 1 January	Private operators can apply for casino and betting licences. Danske Spil keeps the lottery and racing pools.
2012	ROFUS launches	One register blocks a player from every licensed Danish site at once.
2018	Courts back site blocking	After ISPs refused to act, a ruling forced them to comply. DNS blocking has been routine ever since.
2021	Duty rises to 28%	The rate on online casino and betting gross gaming revenue jumps from 20%.
2025	Blocking goes industrial	More than 300 illegal sites blocked in a single year, including one court order covering 178 domains.
2025	Gaming Package 1 passes	Parliament approves sweeping marketing restrictions on 24 October, due to be implemented no later than 1 January 2027.

What protections do Danish players get?

Denmark leans on exclusion and identity rather than hard spending caps. That is the main way it differs from its neighbours.

ROFUS and self-exclusion

ROFUS is the national register of self-excluded players, and it is the single most useful tool on this list. Sign up and every licensed Danish operator is blocked from letting you play – not just the site you were on.

You choose the length: 24 hours, one month, six months, or permanently. Registration runs through MitID, so it takes minutes. The short options matter more than they look. A 24-hour block is a realistic thing to use on a bad evening, and it does not ask you to make a decision about the rest of your life.

More than 60,000 people have registered with ROFUS. A permanent exclusion is... permanent – there is no cooling-off period that quietly reopens your account later.

If you want to talk to someone rather than block yourself, StopSpillet is the state-funded helpline, and it is free and anonymous.

Deposit and loss limits

Here is the honest gap. Denmark does not impose a national deposit cap. Licensed operators have to offer limit-setting tools, and you can use them freely, but nothing is set for you by default, and nothing links your limit across sites the way ROFUS links your exclusion.

So the limit only exists if you set it. Do it before your first deposit, not after a bad week – and set it on each site separately.

Age checks and MitID

The minimum age is 18, and Danish sites verify through MitID rather than asking you to upload documents later. It is quick, and it means a licensed operator knows who you are before you play. It also means ROFUS can work at all, since the register keys off the same identity.

Which games are licensed, and which Danske Spil still keeps

The 2012 reform did not open everything. Danske Spil holds an exclusive licence for the national lottery and for pool betting on horse, dog and pigeon racing. Those are not coming to competitive licensing.

Everything else is open. Online casino games, sports betting and poker all sit under private licences, and live dealer tables are included in the online casino licence rather than being carved out to a separate regime. Land-based casinos run under their own permits.

The practical upshot – if you are looking at slots, tables or a sportsbook, you have a real choice of licensed operators. If you want Lotto, there is one place to buy it.

How to check if a casino is licensed in Denmark

Spillemyndigheden publishes the full list of licence holders, and that list is the only check worth trusting. Look the operator up before you deposit, rather than after.

Two supporting signals help.

Licensed Danish sites carry the official Spillemyndigheden label, usually in the footer, and it links back to the regulator.

They also run MitID verification at sign-up and link to ROFUS. If a site takes your money without ever asking who you are, it is not licensed in Denmark.

What do you give up if you play in an international online casino?

Nothing legal happens to you as a player. The costs are practical, and they stack up:

No regulator to complain to. If a withdrawal stalls or an account is closed on your balance, Spillemyndigheden cannot act for you.
ROFUS does not reach it. Self-excluding blocks the licensed market. An offshore site will still take your deposit.
Your winnings become taxable. Personal income, up to around 52%, self-reported, with no deduction for what you lost getting there.
The site can vanish mid-session. Denmark blocks illegal domains in batches – 98 in 2026 alone, Polymarket among them – and blocking does not wait for your balance to clear.

Obviously, international casinos are still chosen by players, as offshore brands offer higher-value perks, although it comes at a cost.

Spillemyndigheden now works with app stores as well as internet providers, so an unlicensed operator can lose its app and its domain at the same time.

What's changing next in Denmark?

Gaming Package 1 passed parliament on 24 October 2025. It is the biggest change to Danish gambling rules since the market opened, and almost all of it targets marketing rather than play.

A whistle-to-whistle ban on gambling ads around live sport, running from 10 minutes before the broadcast to 10 minutes after, plus an end to live odds displays in stadiums.
Nobody under 25 in gambling marketing, with celebrity and influencer endorsements restricted and age filters required on social campaigns.
No ads within 200 metres of schools and educational institutions, and none on public transport.
Free-money games banned as welcome offers, which will reshape how Danish bonuses are presented.

None of this is live yet. Implementation is due no later than 1 January 2027, so what you see advertised today still runs under the old rules. Worth knowing if you are reading a Danish casino ad and wondering why it looks nothing like the description above.

The bottom line for Danish players

Denmark gets the fundamentals right. One regulator you can actually find, a licence list you can check in a minute, tax-free winnings, and in ROFUS, one of the better self-exclusion systems in Europe.

The weak spot is spending. There is no default deposit cap here, so the protection that stops a session going too far is the one you have to switch on yourself.

Check the operator against Spillemyndigheden's list, set your deposit limit before you fund the account, and have a look at the Danish online casinos we rate if you want a shortlist to start from.

Our responsible gambling guide covers the rest, including how ROFUS compares with the programmes in other markets.

Do you enjoy this article?

Share your experience on Trustpilot

By Nick

Casino Expert Since 2014

Expertise: Strategy & Planning, Editorial Oversight, Quality Control, Content Audits

Learn about our Review Process

Anything incorrect or missing?

Last updated: September 16, 2026

Let us know

Denmark - online gambling regulations

Contents

Contents

Key takeaways: gambling in Denmark

Is online gambling legal in Denmark?

Are online gambling winnings taxable in Denmark?

What Danish casino operators pay?

How Denmark's gambling laws got here

What protections do Danish players get?

ROFUS and self-exclusion

Deposit and loss limits

Age checks and MitID

Which games are licensed, and which Danske Spil still keeps

How to check if a casino is licensed in Denmark

What do you give up if you play in an international online casino?

What's changing next in Denmark?

The bottom line for Danish players

Do you enjoy this article?

By Nick

Anything incorrect or missing?

Featured Guides

Guides

News

Help

Get exclusive deals, news and more...

Denmark - online gambling regulations

Contents

Contents

Key takeaways: gambling in Denmark

Is online gambling legal in Denmark?

Are online gambling winnings taxable in Denmark?

What Danish casino operators pay?

How Denmark's gambling laws got here

What protections do Danish players get?

ROFUS and self-exclusion

Deposit and loss limits

Age checks and MitID

Which games are licensed, and which Danske Spil still keeps

How to check if a casino is licensed in Denmark

What do you give up if you play in an international online casino?

What's changing next in Denmark?

The bottom line for Danish players

Do you enjoy this article?

By Nick

Anything incorrect or missing?

Featured Guides

Guides

News

Help

CasinoWow.com Cookies

Subscribe for Exclusive Offers!

Keep in mind that you can also share our articles and reviews on social media!